Pharmacy-Based Nursing Education Utilizing a Social Media Platform

Social media has changed the way individuals communicate and recently multiple articles have been published highlighting the utilization of social media for education. To our knowledge, cross-discipline education utilizing these platforms has not been evaluated. The purpose of this study was to implement a pharmacist-led, social media-based nursing education program and evaluate the perceived value. A curriculum of pharmacy-related issues was developed and topics were posted to the neurocritical care unit (NCCU) Facebook group or emailed to non-Facebook users weekly. A pre- and posteducation survey was sent out evaluating the program's effectiveness. Thirty-seven nurses were members of the NCCU Facebook group and 33 received the education via email. A total of 29% and 19% of nurses completed the pre- and posteducation survey, respectively. Of those who completed the survey, 36% received education via Facebook. As compared with the preeducation survey, there were no statistically significant differences in nursing performance on fact-based questions (P value > .05 on all assessment questions); however, 100% of respondents wanted to continue this education delivery. Utilizing social media as a means of cross-discipline education was well-received; however, the solitary utilization should be used cautiously, as performance did not improve on assessment questions.